June16, 2006

Mr. Speaker, news from the front: the war on the border continues. More disturbing news, this time from the forgotten front.

We have just voted to finish successfully the war on the first front, Iraq and Afghanistan. Our second front is the fight against armed illegals, human smugglers, drug runners and possible terrorists not just wanting to penetrate our homeland border with Mexico and Canada, but the forgotten front, Puerto Rico.

Mr. Speaker, here I have a map of the Caribbean islands. Puerto Rico is a part of the United States, the location: in the Caribbean islands next to the Dominican Republic, southeast of Cuba, east of Jamaica. It has earned a reputation among border patrol agents as America's biggest threat.

This is not a photo, the second one here, of Americans storming the beach at Iwo Jima or Normandy. Mr. Speaker, this is a photograph of 100 illegal immigrants with landing craft storming the American beaches in a yola, a homemade wooden boat. The boat is from the Caribbean islands. Its cargo, Dominicans, Middle Easterners and others from the islands. The Border Patrol says when people storm the American beaches here in Puerto Rico, they capture maybe one out of 10. And here we have a Blackhawk helicopter, at this particular time, having to view this firsthand.

One U.S. Border Patrol agent says he interviews the survivors of these ill fated trips, and they say they are coming to America for that free amnesty. Once they get to Puerto Rico, they can go anywhere in the United States with only a birth certificate or an easily forgeable photographic ID, if the one Border Patrol agent at the San Juan airport happens to ask for that identification.

We must remember that one of the 9/11 hijackers made his way into the United States through the Virgin Islands. Then he took flight lessons at San Juan, Puerto Rico. More than 2,600 illegals have been found entering the country just this way in Puerto Rico the past year. How many more weren't caught at all? And just where are they going and what are they taking with them?

Most of them, we must remember, are not from south of the border or north of the border; but they come from all over the world. Since we don't require passports to legally enter the United States from Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean islands, people can easily get to Puerto Rico pretending to be from these countries. Even people illegally getting into Puerto Rico then board a plane anywhere in the United States with some fake document that is mistaken for a valid American identification.

We have 22 border patrol agents in Puerto Rico, but only four of them are on duty at any one given time. They are doing the best they can, but they need help.

The border war must be won. We do it by first requiring all people in the Western Hemisphere to have a passport to get into the United States legally. Our 9/11 Commission recommends it. It is a national security issue of the United States. And then we give the resources to our border agents to make sure they can keep people from landing on our beaches and invading our country. It is a border security issue. We must win the war on this second front and prevent the unlawful invasion into America. Keep these landing craft from invading our beaches.

Mr. Speaker, lawlessness on our border breeds more lawlessness in the heartland of America.